‘The Blacklist’ Creator Reveals Some of the Show’s Secrets

If you are like me, you have been in “The Blacklist” withdrawal for the past few weeks. While the hit show didn’t leave us on a dramatic cliffhanger when it took its winter break, the adrenaline rush of the storming of the FBI black site, the kidnapping and torture of Red, and then Red’s confrontation with the mysterious and powerful character played by Alan Alda left all of us out of breath and eager for what would come next.

So, in my quest to figure out what will come next, I went straight to the source. I spoke with the show’s executive producer and creator, Jon Bokenkamp.

So, I hear one of the reasons you agreed to this is that you actually read my blog.

Yup and I love it. We’re so in the show and have no life at the moment and I’m not really aware of what is going on out there. My one way to connect with other people outside of the writer’s room and know what people think of the show is on these various blogs. Your blog has really smart people who are watching. They have great theories. I had one of the guys in the writer’s room make a big list of all the theories. Who knows, maybe there’s some great idea out there that we haven’t even thought of. We’ll take the ideas wherever we can get them.

All of us are having a lot of fun speculating about it. Did you know you were making a hit when you were working on this?

No! I really just love the character of Red and the larger mystery at the core of this. That’s what drew me to it. And now it is fun to look at all the different angles the show can go. But there’s never any sense that you have a hit. There’s such a strange confluence of things that have to happen; from the right script to the right actor to people connecting with the show. There’s so much out of your control that it’s a surreal experience when it all happens just right.

I feel like you’ve created this hybrid of a show. It’s a procedural and a mystery. Sort of “CSI” meets “Lost” or “Law & Order” combined with the “X-Files.” Is that what you were going for?

Yeah, absolutely. I am not really interested in a straight-up procedural, case-of-the-week show. That isn’t the kind of television I am interested in. I’m drawn to the bigger mysteries of serialized storytelling but that seems to have a shorter shelf-life and isn’t really network TV. We always talked about this being a 70-30 split. We’re still trying to find the right mix of serialized and case-of-the-week storytelling. What’s special about this is we have the ability to do both.

There were a couple episodes early on that felt like there wasn’t much that happened with the mystery story, but that certainly hasn’t been the case the past couple episodes!

I worry about that in returning because it is a show that has a lot of those stand-alone episodes. We always intended for it to be that way. But it has been more heavily serialized the past few episodes and will continue to be for the next one or two. I hope people aren’t disappointed when we have more of those episodes that are just a good Blacklist case and don’t have as much about the mystery of our central characters.

We get that you can’t just tell your serialized story. You are making a show that you hope to be on for many years. You’d probably run out of story if you did nothing but the mystery.

Yeah, we could burn through it very quickly. It’s tough. The mystery stories are more fun in the writer’s room but we don’t want to burn through it. We’ve got a lot of good mythology to tell and it’s hard to resist going there. When you’re having trouble with a story and are wondering how it will hold up, it’s easy to say let’s go back to the larger mythology and tell a little nugget of that. But we can’t always do that because we do hope to be on the air for a while.

Well, while we like catching the Blacklist bad guys, the mysteries are what keep us coming back. We have Red’s history, and his relationship with Liz, and we have Liz’s relationship with Tom and whether Tom is who he says he is. What is your favorite mystery on the show?

I’m really intrigued by the mystery of Tom and who he is. That’s one where it’s really interesting to me to read the blogs and see what people say. I love seeing how much people love or hate this guy. It’s a storyline that people really want to talk about. It makes it kinda fun.

I call him Tom Bond on the blog, because I am convinced he is a spy. Can you tell me if he is?

Oh please! You know I can’t tell you that. Ha! I will tell you that we are going to start exploring him a little more closely. We are going to have some answers about Tom and Liz coming up. That’s not a story we are going to be putting on the back burner.

Do you worry about what happens if you give answers and people aren’t satisfied?

Not really. I figure if I am surprised by it and the other writers in the room are surprised by it that’s all we can do. I’ve had movies and scripts that I loved that people didn’t really like. I don’t think anyone knows the magic formula for what connects or why this show has connected so well. I try not to think about how well things will be received. If I’m surprised and enjoy it, that’s all I can do.

I think back to what happened when “Lost” gave answers and people were not satisfied and to when the “X-Files” took too long to give answers and viewers stopped watching. What do you do?

(Sigh) It’s hard. That is a concern. But we do and we will continue to give answers. It’s not something we are going to tease out forever. We do know the answers, not to all of the questions, but we know the important ones We have signposts of where we want to be along the way as we get to the end. How we get there, the exact path we take, is the fun part for the writers. We’re just telling the best story we can and hopefully people will be satisfied.

Do you have a long-term plan, are there things that aren’t revealed today that you plan to get to in season three or five or whatever?

There’s some of that. I have had long conversations with James Spader and other writers about where the show is ultimately going. What’s difficult for me is I’ve never done TV before. I primarily write movie thrillers and in that medium it’s all about the ending and reverse engineering your story from the ending to the beginning. But in TV you can’t work in that reverse capacity because you don’t know how long you are going to be on the air. It is exciting though to take our time as we arrive at some of these big turns.

Who is your favorite character… or should I reverse that question and ask you to tell me why Red is your favorite character?

Spader does a marvelous job. I think everyone’s doing a wonderful job, but he has a strong perspective on who he thinks the character is. We’ve had lots of long conversations about what kind of person Red is, what kind of music does he listen to and things like that. Red loves being Red and living life to the fullest so we are always trying to find situations that are fun and funny and dangerous for him to experience.

Can you confirm for me that the scars on Lizzie’s hand and the markings on the boxes that have been found are the same?

Uhhh, I cannot confirm that, but it sure is interesting that they look similar, isn’t it?

Give me one hint at something that will be revealed in the second half of the season? Are we going to find out if Tom really is a spy? Are we going to know if Red really is Lizzie’s father?

What’s interesting to me is we do answer questions. We’ve answered both of those. In the last episode, Liz asked the father question and Red gave her an answer. A few episodes ago we took Tom into the blacksite and the FBI cleared him. But, I do think it is most exciting when we give an answer that raises more questions. So, do you feel like those two questions have been answered?

Actually, I am going to take Red at his word when he said he was not Lizzie’s father. I believe him. I think the notion that Red was Lizzie’s father was so telegraphed from the beginning that I never suspected it was true. But just because the FBI cleared Tom at the blackstite doesn’t close the book on that to me. Red is warning Liz too much about Tom for there not to be something more there.

I will tell you that there are answers that we will be giving about… how do I delicately state this… we will be answering things about both Red’s family and about his background. One of the interesting things to me is getting to know who Red is in a better capacity. And we are going to continue to explore Tom and Liz’s relationship. I wish I could give you a better answer than that.

Okay, I will tell you one thing that will happen when the show starts up again. When we come back, we will see Red on fire. He is a man on a mission. That is going to be fun. We are going to see him dealing with the repercussions of what happened during the incursion into the black site.

Follow Jason Evans on Twitter @TVFilmTalk and check back in every Monday and Wednesday for his recaps of “The Blacklist” and “Arrow.”

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